The Calgary Flames (31-36-8, 70 points) are two games into their final road trip of the season, a six game mammoth trip that features several strong opponents. They’ve already lost to Colorado and Vegas by a combined 15-5 score. They’ll try to bounce back when they visit the Anaheim Ducks (41-30-5, 87 points), a likely playoff-bound team who hosted (and lost to) the St. Louis Blues on Friday night and are playing on back-to-back nights.

Today’s broadcast begins at 8 p.m. MT on Sportsnet One, City TV and Sportsnet 960 The Fan.

Projected lines via Daily Faceoff:

Blake Coleman – Mikael Backlund – Matt Coronato
Matvei Gridin – Morgan Frost – Joel Farabee
Martin Pospisil – Ryan Strome – Victor Olofsson
Yegor Sharangovich – Connor Zary – Adam Klapka

Kevin Bahl – Zach Whitecloud
Olli Maatta – Hunter Brzustewicz
Yan Kuznetsov – Zayne Parekh

Via Sportsnet’s Derek Wills, it sounds like Devin Cooley will start in net, backed up by Dustin Wolf. The projected healthy extras for Calgary look like Brayden Pachal, Tyson Gross, Ryan Lomberg, John Beecher, Brennan Othmann and Aydar Suniev. (Yeah, we know, the Flames are carrying a lot of extra bodies right now. It’s audition season and they’re largely rotating through their forwards.)

The Flames closed out their homestand against a very bad Vancouver team and played loose… but still beat them handily. They were looser against Colorado than is optimal and got walloped in that outing. They were much better in Vegas, generally playing two pretty strong periods of hockey and then fading in the third period. If the Flames play like they did against Vegas, they’ll be pretty competitive against the Ducks. We’ll see if they can transport Thursday’s formula to the Honda Center.

Projected lines via Daily Faceoff:

Chris Kreider – Leo Carlsson – Troy Terry
Alex Killorn – Mikael Granlund – Beckett Sennecke
Mason McTavish – Ryan Poehling – Jeffrey Viel
Frank Vatrano – Tim Washe – Nathan Gaucher

Jackson Lacombe – Jacob Trouba
Ian Moore – John Carlson
Olen Zellweger – Drew Helleson

We’re projecting Ville Husso to start in net, backed up by Lukas Dostal. Friday’s extra healthy body was Ross Johnston, so we’ll see if they make any changes.

On one hand: the Ducks are tied with Edmonton for first place in the Pacific Division. On the other hand, they’re banged up, missing some key players right now, and they were not especially good on Friday night in a 6-2 home loss to St. Louis. They allowed four even strength goals and two power play goals and spent most of the game chasing. They’ll need to be better against Calgary to avoid a poor result.

The Flames are without Sam Honzek, Jake Bean, Jonathan Huberdeau and Joel Hanley.

The Ducks are without Petr Mrazek, Jansen Harkins, Cutter Gauthier, Radko Gudas and Pavel Mintyukov.

This is the fourth and final meeting between these two clubs. The Ducks have won each of the first three meetings: 4-3 in overtime in January, 3-2 in a shootout on Mar. 1, and 3-2 in overtime on Mar. 26.